Anxiety in foreign language learning: proficiency and gender under scrutiny

Abstract

Second language learning anxiety has been the most widely studied emotion in SLA (second language acquisition), it is said to be one of the most disputed and complex concepts, as there are various internal and external factors that influence it. There are numerous types of language anxiety described in this paper, the ones that can be considered as the most relevant, harmful or helpful anxiety and trait or state anxiety. Besides, the causes of anxiety in language learning are difficult to pinpoint but in this work, special heed will be paid to the teaching style and learners’ personality. Several studies have produced inconsistent results when it comes to the two most ambiguous variables in language anxiety, namely gender and proficiency in second language learning anxiety. In an attempt to analyse this issue, this study aims to investigate the differences in anxiety depending on students’ proficiency and gender. The participants of this study were forty-four high school students of a foreign language (English) in Spain and the study collected the data on language anxiety through a questionnaire modified from Dewaele, Franco Magdalena and Saitos’ (2019) version. In the proficiency section the groups were divided into three regarding their level of English: high, medium and low. The study found that language anxiety in different levels of proficiency did not have clear enough results to have a consistent conclusion, as the results do not completely coincide with previous studies. But it is crucial to mention that the most striking result was the fact that the medium proficiency students had the highest anxiety level. The analysis of the relationship between language anxiety and gender did not show significant differences between male and female students. For the situations in which the students feel anxious, the teacher should act in a beneficial manner in order to have an effective positive impact on the learning environment and students’ motivation. All in all, this study shows that, so as to examine anxiety in foreign language learning, a lot of variables need to be considered because there are many that affect anxiety directly.